Once upon a time in the business kingdom, there was a company that suffered from a terrible curse. Their castle was full of talented people who were all capable of working magic but they couldn’t find a single source of truth in their data and reporting – and they needed a brave and valiant hero to help them find it.

Enter HubSpot, their white knight on a noble steed! Now HubSpot isn’t going to be much help in slaying ogres or saving damsels imprisoned in towers. But it is a champion when it comes to banishing the mist around data, conjuring up clear and accurate reports, and uniting everyone around the same banner.

So if you’re holding out for a single source of truth, here’s why it’s HubSpot to the rescue…

Break down the silos between sales and marketing

Let’s imagine this company has a healthy number of leads coming into the castle each month but the percentage being converted into sales is low by comparison. You need to know why that is – but without a single source of truth, the answer depends on who you ask.

Mary in the marketing turret will say her team is sending through plenty of leads but Simon in the sales wing just isn’t doing enough to properly nurture and convert them. Meanwhile, Simon will say his team is converting all the leads they can but the majority of what they get from Mary is low-quality or not even true leads to begin with.

If they’re not aligned on what qualifies as a true, high-quality lead – and if there’s no way to prove that your leads fit that definition – you’ll never get to the bottom of what’s really going on. Marketing could keep funnelling along any old email address that enters the system, or sales could keep passing over valid leads because they don’t think they’re good enough. If there’s no way to settle the argument, they’ll get entrenched into silos pretty quick.

Thankfully, our gallant knight HubSpot has your back. It doesn’t just put all your leads into one place. It can also be set up to grade leads as they come in, based on factors such as whether they used a work email, whether that domain matches any target customers, and so on. You can set the threshold for a genuine MQL, then HubSpot takes care of only sending on the leads that meet it.

Give leadership a clear view of reality

If your sales and marketing teams are scrapping over who’s doing the right job with leads, it’s not just a problem for their cohesion. It’s also a headache for the monarchs (that’s your leadership figures, in case that wasn’t clear) who are looking for easy-to-grasp solutions but don’t know who to believe.

That’s especially a problem if – like most marketing managers – you need to prove your worth to the higher ups. I know what it’s like – you work hard to generate leads and bring valuable contacts to the sales team but your bosses are only interested in how much money those leads result in, not the nuance of why that is or isn’t happening.

HubSpot helps you to show the facts and take the emotion out of it. The number of MQLs coming in, the number of calls the sales team is making, the number of conversions – it’s all there in black and white, and in the kind of quantifiable form that bosses and CEOs want to see.

Because it’s a single source of truth - an honourable knight, you might say - HubSpot can’t be twisted. It presents reality, not perspectives. If your sales and marketing teams are still operating from separate databases and spreadsheets, it’s all too easy for each team to spotlight what makes them look great and quietly brush the rest under the carpet. With HubSpot providing a single source of truth, you instead get an objective overview of what’s really going on.

Drive better decisions with reports that actually make sense

What if your business is one of those rare cases where different departments are never at loggerheads with each other? Firstly, lucky you. Secondly, having a single source of truth isn’t just about mediating arguments between silos. It’s also about making sure you have the proper foundation to report on your data.

Without accurate reporting, neither monarchs nor business leaders can make informed decisions – and if there’s no single source of truth, there’s probably not going to be accurate reporting.

Maybe you’ve got duplicate data being counted because one person is entering job titles in full (Court Jester) and another is writing acronyms (CJ). Maybe someone makes a mistake while manually copying information so Lady Battenberg becomes Lad Battenburgh, or misses a zero or drops a rogue decimal point. Maybe it just takes forever to make one graph because Simon in the sales turret (remember him?) keeps forgetting to give you access to his database.

Or maybe none of that happens, and every report is 100% accurate despite drawing on half a dozen individual sources of truth. That’s still so inefficient it ought to make you wince. It’s like doing your weekly shop but splitting it across multiple supermarkets – you might come home with all your bread, milk and carrots, but you’re also going to take twice as long getting it.

With HubSpot, all the data that’s collected across the company is stored in one place, and in the same way. When you need to represent something it’s clear and simple – HubSpot can even produce all the graphs and charts for you. Mary and Simon will call a truce. The monarch will make better decisions. And everyone will live happily ever after.

PS If HubSpot is a knight in shining armour, a trusted HubSpot partner is the horse they ride in on. Find out how Noisy Little Monkey can help you tie your database together and find that coveted single source of truth.